First, let's just talk about the general atmosphere, never before have I felt so drawn towards an anime and felt like as if I was in that world, its amazing. Maybe I'm a little bit biased because I'm currently a college student as well and this felt very close to home, they way they were living and the vibes and all that but this atmosphere that they're able to achieve is something I've never felt before, more of a feeling thing but I think it deserves a mention, the only anime I can think of that has gotten even somewhat close to getting to this level of immersion(speaking for me of course) was probably a silent voice but even then it wasn't close to this anime, which leads me nicely to my next point.
The illustrations, art style and the animation. The art style isn't anything that stands out, its good, still images of the characters would just make you say "huh good art style" but my god did Production I.G. pulled out all the stops for this. They never seem to disappoint with any of the anime they are handed. Of course everyone is going to talk about how great the animation is but let's give a hand to the illustration artists, the illustrations in this anime were so damn good, there were times it seemed so realistic that my sister thought I was watching a real life movie when she walked in on a paused frame with just the landscape, and they did that consistently, every aspect of this anime just compliments another aspect of it so perfectly, I've never seen such fluidly working anime, it just works, the art style compliments the animation, the illustration compliments the animation, the animation compliments the music, its unbelievable how they pulled this off, its like they were given movie budget, and truly, every episode felt like movie quality.
Next, the animation, now I don't know that much about animation in its technicality that I can go and minutely breakdown so I'm just going to say that it looked fluid. I hardly noticed ANY "bad frames" and it was just good to look at overall.
Now let's talk about THE CHARACTERS, oh my god, the writer, the goddamn writer of this light novel is a genius, the details he spread out about every character were so subtle, but he kept adding on to it little by little giving every character so much depth and complexion that its amazing, I've never seen such well done character writing before this anime(again, maybe biased because they are college students). She did this so well in fact that after about halfway the anime, every episode was making me tear up, and most of the times things weren't even really that "sad"(on a surface level). I don't know what sort of trickery she did but goddamn, it felt like I was tearing up over nothing at times, but I knew the reason for my tears were the subtle increment in the depth of the characters that we knew, its just mind-blowing to me how someone can write characters that well. The character developments felt natural as well unlike a lot of other anime where its forced and honestly I could go on about every character and how they grew and why it makes sense but that would just make this review four times as long.
Now we get to the best part, THE MUSIC, for me music is very important when it comes to be it anime, or movies or tv shows, good music can be a very important aspect in a show that can often get ignored, and it may come as a surprise but good music can be just as important in setting the tone as good animation. And my god did they pull through, the openings were good not spectacular but the endings were just incredible, it felt as if the composers watched the anime and really got a feel for the atmosphere and wrote their songs accordingly, the endings really add to the emotions of the episodes. Next let's talk about the OST, hands down the best OST I've heard in an anime, every single track complimented what was going on in the story so well, this was like Hans Zimmer level of composition, the touch of beauty that is adds feels subtle but is very significant. On top of that, what's great is that if you read the titles of the tracks in the OST, it itself feels like a story, after completing the anime, I spent almost two hours just listening to the OST in its admiration and it felt amazing, the OST is just as beautiful as the animation and the illustrations, this aspect made the anime a hundred times better than it already was.
All in all, I've never watched any anime that felt this perfect in all its aspects, animation, art style, illustration, storytelling and music(keep in mind all of this is subjective and you may not like it as much as I did). I kind of want to stop watching anime now because of how good this one was, every once in a while you stumble onto an anime that's a 10 for you and its the best feeling ever and watching this anime definitely brought me a lot of joy.
